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Palaeognaths
Palaeognathae (; ) is an infraclass of birds, called paleognaths or palaeognaths, within the class Aves of the clade Archosauria. It is one of the two extant infraclasses of birds, the other being Neognathae, both of which form Neornithes. Palaeognathae contains five extant orders consisting of four flightless lineages (plus two that are extinct), termed ratites, and one flying lineage, the Neotropic tinamous. There are 47 species of tinamous, five of kiwis (''Apteryx''), three of cassowaries (''Casuarius''), one of emus (''Dromaius'') (another became extinct in historic times), two of rheas (''Rhea'') and two of ostriches (''Struthio'').Clements, J. C. ''et al''. (2010) Recent research has indicated that paleognaths are monophyletic but the traditional taxonomic split between flightless and flighted forms is incorrect; tinamous are within the ratite radiation, meaning flightlessness arose independently multiple times via parallel evolution. There are three extinct groups tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tinamiformes
Tinamous () are members of the order Tinamiformes (), and family Tinamidae (), divided into two distinct subfamily, subfamilies, containing 46 species found in Mexico, Central America, and South America. The word "tinamou" comes from the Carib language, Galibi term for these birds, ''tinamu''. Tinamous are the only living group of Palaeognathae, palaeognaths able to fly, and were traditionally regarded as the sister group of the flightless ratites, but recent work places them well within the ratite radiation as most closely related to the extinct moa of New Zealand, implying flightlessness emerged among ratites multiple times. Tinamous first appear in the fossil record in the Miocene epoch. They are generally sedentary, ground-dwelling and, though not flightless, when possible avoid flight in favour of hiding or running away from danger. They are found in a variety of habitats, ranging from semi-arid climate, semi-arid alpine climate, alpine grasslands to tropical rainforests. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paleocene
The Paleocene ( ), or Palaeocene, is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 66 to 56 mya (unit), million years ago (mya). It is the first epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name is a combination of the Ancient Greek ''palaiós'' meaning "old" and the Eocene Epoch (which succeeds the Paleocene), translating to "the old part of the Eocene". The epoch is bracketed by two major events in Earth's history. The K–Pg extinction event, brought on by an asteroid impact (Chicxulub impact) and possibly volcanism (Deccan Traps), marked the beginning of the Paleocene and killed off 75% of species, most famously the non-avian dinosaurs. The end of the epoch was marked by the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which was a major climatic event wherein about 2,500–4,500 gigatons of carbon were released into the atmosphere and ocean systems, causing a spike in global temperatures and ocean acidification. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lithornithiformes
Lithornithidae is an extinct, possibly paraphyletic (but see below) group of early paleognath birds. They are known from fossils dating to the Upper Paleocene through the Middle Eocene of North America and Europe, with possible Late Cretaceous representatives. All are extinct today; the youngest specimen is the currently unnamed SGPIMH MEV1 specimen from the mid-Eocene Messel Pit site. Lithornithids had long, slender, bills for probing. They closely resembled modern tinamous, aside from more developed wings. They possessed a rhynchokinetic skull with relatively unfused cranial bones, a weakly fused pygostyle and a splenial. The unguals were more curved than in tinamous and probably allowed better perching in trees. The order Lithornithiformes was erected by Dr. Peter Houde in 1988. Initially, only three genera ('' Lithornis'', '' Paracathartes'', and '' Pseudocrypturus'') and eight named species were included. '' Promusophaga'' (Harrison & Walker, 1977) originally considered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neognathae
Neognathae (; ) is an infraclass of birds, called neognaths, within the class Aves of the clade Archosauria. Neognathae includes the majority of living birds; the exceptions being the tinamous and the flightless ratites, which belong instead to the sister taxon Palaeognathae. There are nearly 10,000 living species of neognaths. The earliest fossils are known from the very end of the Cretaceous with the oldest known members being ''Teviornis'' and ''Vegavis'', but molecular clocks suggest that neognaths originated sometime in the first half of the Late Cretaceous, about 90 million years ago. Since then, they have undergone adaptive radiation, producing the diversity of form, function, and behavior that exists today. Neognathae includes the order (biology), order Passeriformes (perching birds), one of the largest orders of land vertebrates, containing some 60% of living birds. Passeriformes is twice as species-rich as Rodentia and about five times as species-rich as bat, Chiroptera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novaeratitae
Novaeratitae is a proposed clade that was originally defined to contain the recent common ancestors of the orders Casuariiformes (emus and cassowaries) and Apterygiformes (kiwi). This clade was named by Yuri ''et al.'' (2013) and phylogenetically defined in the ''PhyloCode'' by Sangster ''et al.'' (2022) as "the least inclusive crown clade containing ''Apteryx australis'' and '' Casuarius casuarius''". Recently it has been determined that the elephant birds of the extinct order Aepyornithiformes were the closest relatives of the kiwis, and therefore are part of this group. The implication is that ratites had lost flight independently in each group, as the elephant birds are the only novaeratites found outside Oceania. This clade has been contested by other studies, which find the relationships between the four main clades of non-ostrich palaeognaths (moa+tinamou, kiwi+elephant bird, rheas, and emus+cassowaries) to be an unresolved polytomy An internal node of a phylogenetic t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Notopalaeognathae
Notopalaeognathae is a clade that contains the order Rheiformes (rheas), the clade Novaeratitae (which includes the cassowaries and emus, the kiwis, and the extinct elephant birds), and the clade Dinocrypturi (comprising the tinamous and the extinct moas). Notopalaeognathae was named by Yuri ''et al.'' (2013) and defined in the '' PhyloCode'' by Sangster ''et al.'' (2022) as "the least inclusive crown clade containing '' Rhea americana'', '' Tinamus major'', and '' Apteryx australis''". The exact relationships of this group, including its recently extinct members, have only recently been uncovered. The two lineages endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ... to New Zealand, the kiwis and the extinct moas, are not each other's closest relatives: the moas are mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flightless Bird
Flightless birds are birds that cannot Bird flight, fly, as they have, through evolution, lost the ability to. There are over 60 extant species, including the well-known ratites (ostriches, emus, cassowary, cassowaries, Rhea (bird), rheas, and Kiwi (bird), kiwis) and penguins. The smallest flightless bird is the Inaccessible Island rail (length 12.5 cm, weight 34.7 g). The largest (both heaviest and tallest) flightless bird, which is also the largest living bird in general, is the common ostrich (2.7 m, 156 kg). Many domesticated birds, such as the domestic chicken and domestic duck, have lost the ability to fly for extended periods, although their ancestral species, the red junglefowl and mallard, respectively, are capable of extended flight. A few particularly bred birds, such as the Broad Breasted White turkey, have become totally flightless as a result of selective breeding; the birds were bred to grow massive breast meat that weighs too much for the bird's wings ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
